


Half fairy tale and half tourist trap

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [188]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23043718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: Blaine and the boys are going to Venice because Blaine has been nominated for Best Actor at the Venice International Film Festival and also, incidentally, because it's Leo's birthday and this trip to Italy is his present.On the flight there Cody tells Leo about a cursed palace in Venice that is said to be haunted.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Original Male Character(s), Original Male Character/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Leoverse [188]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541
Kudos: 1





	Half fairy tale and half tourist trap

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an **AU** from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.  
> In this instance of the universe Blaine is an Hollywood actor (for a change) and he has a relationship with Leo and Cody since they were minors (well, they're _still_ minors in this particular story but they will not always be). Anyway, at some point he'll announce this relationship to the world and the news will, of course, cause a little mayhem. Not here, not yet, though. Something like that.
> 
> written for: COW-T #10  
> prompt: [This photo](https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2018/01/30/13/42/venice-3118803_1280.jpg)

When Blaine told him they were going to Italy for his birthday Leo should have known there was a catch.

Hadn't they gone to Ireland for an award ceremony last year? Or in Africa for a sponsorship the year before? Not to mention Japan, where Blaine had been busy with a series of dreadful TV commercials?

But Leo's short term memory can be very short. He didn't even think there could have been an ulterior motive, he was just happy they were going and basically started packing, even if the trip was going to happen two months later and only under the condition that they were both – Leo and Cody – passing their finals.

They had been two very intense months of study.

Then it turned out that Blaine was nominated for Best Actor at the Venice International Film Festival and he was most likely to win the award, and that was really why they were going _to Italy_ instead of somewhere else.

Leo didn't get angry, though, because it was still a birthday trip – and still the best birthday present he was going to receive – and Blaine planned to go for the ceremony award but then to stay two weeks more after that just to spend some time alone with him and Cody. However Leo looked at it, it was still a win-win situation.

And it obviously still is as they fly over the Atlantic Ocean on a $36,000 Emirates First Class flight, Leo is just not a big fan of long flights. 

He gets bored really easily, especially in enclosed spaces where he can't just stand up and start pacing. Sure, the first class that Blaine always allows himself, and consequently them, has some nice features – bed-like seats (sometimes even real beds), individual media stations, top-quality service – but they're still forced to be in a tin box 3,000 feet above ground for nine hours with nothing to do but watch movies, listen to music or sleep.

Leo is as nerdy as they come, but he's also a little hyperactive, so there's only so much TV he could watch or so many pages he can read before he starts grinding his teeth. 

“You look like you're about to explode,” Cody says from his side of the double seats they're occupying. It's a little like being in two joined cubicles, but with comfy armchairs instead of office chairs and a little table just for the two of them, on which Leo has already piled up all his devices and a book.

“You're not even looking at me,” He protests.

Cody has been reading the same magazine for about three hours, an unjustified amount of time for a hundred pages, and that is driving Leo mad. “I don't need to,” he says, slowly turning another page. “I can feel you vibrating from here.”

Leo perches himself on the table, making sure to invade Cody's personal space, which is one of his favorite hobbies. “What are you even reading that is so interesting?”

“It's a travel guide of Venice,” Cody shows him the cover of the booklet, a photo of old palaces over a lot of water and a gondola, which is pretty much all Leo knows about Venice. The titles says _Venezia_ , though. It means that Cody is reading in Italian. He can do that because his mom comes from Sicily.

Cody's mom is named Rosalia and Leo loves her for three simple reasons: one, she gave birth to Cody; two, she's a wonderful cook and she's always willing to teach him how to make things; third, she basically adopted him. When he was younger, about twelve or thirteen, and Blaine wasn't around yet, he could always crash at Cody's house if he couldn't go back home or he didn't feel like it. And now that he doesn't need to, because he can stay over at Blaine's whenever he wants, she still invites him over for any holiday or any random day. She's a very nice lady, and whenever she worries for his son she always worries for Leo too.

Anyway, it's a good thing that Cody can speak Italian because neither Leo nor Blaine speaks a single word of it and English always seems to be a problem over there.

“What does it say?” Leo asks, pointing randomly at he page Cody is reading.

“Oh, this is St. Elena's legend,” Cody says, before re-reading a couple of lines. Leo can almost hear the little gears in his head spinning as he tries to translate on the spot. “So, St. Elena is the name of one of the islands forming the eastern part of Venice.

Legend has it that a vessel transporting the remains of St. Elena from Constantinople ran aground on the island, which obviously had no name at the time. The sailors tried everything they could to refloat the vessel, but it didn't want to move an inch. So they decided to unload the whole cargo, including the saint's remains, to simplify the operations.

Once it was lightened, the vessel started to float again. They loaded the cargo back on the vessel, which instantly ran aground again. Only when the sailors put the remains of the saint on the isle, the vessel could sail away again.”

Leo chuckles, dangling even more over the table. “St. Elena didn't take no for an answer, she wanted to stay on the island. I like her,” he declares, then he falls over on Cody's seat. “Scoot over.”

Cody makes room for him, his smaller body settling automatically around Leo's longer and edgier one. “Leo!” he mutters, looking around nervously. “I don't think it's allowed.”

“Each of these seats costs $12,000, Cody. I'm sure I could have sex with you in here and the hostess would look the other way,” Leo comments with a smirk. “Speaking of which, wouldn't it be a good way to spend the time?”

Cody frowns. “Don't even think about it.” He hits him on his head. “Remember what Blaine said?”

“I don't remember anything about sex on a plane,” Leo muses, pretending to be serious (or maybe being just a little bit serious), “which is a loophole I'm suddenly willing to exploit.”

Cody hits him on the head again, making one of the hostesses laugh as she passes by. “No! He said, don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

Leo must admit that Blaine would do a lot of things, but he certainly would not have sex on a plane as he's the only actor in Hollywood who actively avoids doing anything even remotely interesting for the paparazzi. Now, this could be the direct consequence of having a relationship with not one but two minors – you kinda want to avoid unwanted attention in this case – but still, Blaine doesn't exactly strike him as the crazy type.

Besides, Leo is _still_ trying to convince Blaine to have full sex with him in his house – which would really be only a formality at this point since they have done literally everything else – but Blaine has this stupid 17-and-up-only policy and he doesn't want to budge. Reminding him that he could be charged with statutory rape anyway at this point only seems to make things worse.

He's even sitting four rows down from where they are to avoid any suspicions, so there's that.

Sex on a plane seems very unlikely.

“Alright, I'm gonna seat here with you and behave, then,” Leo nods. “That he would do.”

“Not in public,” Cody chuckles.

“Yeah, but that's because he's old and people would frown,” Leo says wisely. “I'm actually two years younger than you, so I can sit with you, cuddle you and even smooch you in public.”

“You said you'd behave!”

Leo pulls Cody to himself by the shirt and kisses him openly on his mouth. The hostess does look the other way. “Smooching is behaving,” he declares. And as far as he's concerned, that is the mere truth.

The situation between the three of them is a little complicated and a little bit on edge too. Blaine loves them both, but he's been really careful with them, especially with Leo, who was very young when this whole thing started and he _still is_ one year later. Blaine messes around with him – he messes around with him _a lot_ – but he doesn't wan to take the next step yet, no matter how much Leo is begging him for it.

The result is a lot of sexual frustration that Leo pours on Cody.

Not that Leo wouldn't want Cody even if Blaine agreed on having sex with him, of course, but that makes him even more horny than what he would normally be on a regular basis at fifteen. And so he's constantly over Cody. Smooching is basically just _good morning_ for him.

“Alright, alright,” Cody slowly backs off, giving him time to get out of kissing mode. “Pick another page of the book, I'm going to translate another story for you.”

That's Cody-ish for _stop touching me like that, I don't want this anymore_. Cody says a lot of noes that actually means yes – it's kind of his thing – and Leo is allowed and invited to ignore them. This one is not, though, this is a real one, so Leo does as he's been told.

He grabs the book and starts flipping through it, looking for some inspiring image. He skips gondolas – too corny – and the unfailing masks – Leo loves Carnivals but they always look a little too touristic to him – he wants something more unusual. 

He stops when he finds the photo of an old palace – no news there – that looks like it's bending on the side. He knows everything in Venice is built on water, which sounds both completely stupid and totally awesome to him, so everything is unstable but this palace doesn't look like it's slowly leaning towards his destruction. It just looks crooked, which is insane.

“This one!” He taps on the photo twice. “What does it say?”

“Let's see,” Cody grabs the book and gives the page a quick read. “Oh, you will love this. So, this one that you see here is called the _Cursed Palace_ , because since his construction everyone who owned it was brutally murdered, committed suicide or died in weird accidents. Someone says it's because the palace was built on a Templars' graveyard.”

Cody chuckles and Leo looks at him in confusion. “Why are you laughing? This is creepy.”

“I'm sorry. It's just that it sounds like the European version of the usual natives' graveyard in horror movies, you know? They don't have natives, so it has to be templars buried in their cursed cemeteries,” Cody chuckles again. “Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. Some other people think that the palace is being negatively affected by the medallion on the door of the building next to it. And, apparently, it is still haunted by the spirits of the people who died there.”

“Cool! We have to go there!” Leo says, excitedly. He's a big fan of horror movies and he always tries to convince Cody to watch them with him, which leads to Cody not sleeping for weeks.

“No, thank you.”

“Oh, come on, it's just an old palace in the middle of the most touristic city in the world, what do you think it would happen?” Leo mocks him. “There's going to be half the world in there, it's not exactly Amityville.”

“I have to think about it.”

“Let's make a deal,” Leo grins. “You come with me to the cursed palace _at night_ —“

“At night?” Cody looks at him horror.

“At night,” Leo confirms with a nod, “and you can drag me to one museum.”

“Two and you don't just pretend you're not there, you take an audio guide and you listen to it.”

“One museum and one of those historical re-enactments you love so much for whatever reason,” Leo offers.

Cody grins. “No, it's too easy, you love cosplayers,” Cody shakes his head. “One museum and a gondola tour of the city. The audio guide is still mandatory for both events. That's my final offer.”

“Fine!” Leo gives in, “But only because you're very cute and I can't resist you.”

Blaine chooses that moment to pass by their seats and throw one single careful look at them – he does that at least once every two hours, just to check the situation – Leo smirks at him, daring a quick wave of his fingers. He intensely hopes to make him jealous by holding Cody on his lap. If that works, one of Blaine's glorious moments of wild hunger could wait for them at the hotel.

A boy can always hope.

*

Night in Venice is really night.

They're used to New York's lights – always on, constantly bright – this is pitch black for them, which is fine because they don't want to be seen while they try to break into a two century old palace in Italy, but it also makes it hard to see where they are going or to understand if they're really are going where they are supposed to. Google Maps has not been that helpful so far.

The rest of this adventure, though, they planned thoroughly.

First, they waited for Blaine to be busy with the Venice International Film Festival. Dottie – Blaine's agent, who doesn't really agree on Cody and Leo's presence in his life – forbid them to be anywhere near the red carpet or the venue, because she doesn't want them to be photographed or anything. She also asked that they stayed in a different hotel, but luckily Blaine said no to that.

Anyway, normally they would have protested and put up a scene. Or at least Leo would have, because he hates to be left back at the hotel like a poodle. But tonight he welcomed the news – just threw a tiny tantrum to keep up appearance and make sure Blaine will cuddle them later – because he needed Blaine out of the way as he sneaked out of the hotel and dragged Cody to the Cursed Palace.

He ordered a few things on Amazon – a torch, a rope, a camera jammer and a new set of lockpicking tools since he had to leave his own at home – but it turns out Italians don't believe in home security. Not only the building has no CCTV cameras, but the lock of the front door is basically already busted. It only takes Leo two minutes to open it. “Come on, get inside,” he pulls Cody in and then closes the door.

“This is illegal,” Cody says, trying to see something in the darkness.

“Maybe one of the ghosts will kill us and we won't have to go to prison.”

“Leo!”

He chuckles and turns up the torch. The place is not as empty as he was expecting, which takes a lot away from the experience. Haunted houses are usually abandoned, with roomed filled with debris and random stuff, like wheelchairs – there's always at least one wheelchair even when it's not an hospital – creepy dolls looking at you from the weirdest places, shard of broken mirrors still hanging on the walls and so on. This place has probably been dusted this morning and everything is in its place. No trace of medical devices either.

It looks like a museum.

“It's a little underwhelming,” Leo says as they walk upstairs.

“Shut up, it's still creepy,” Cody complains. Then something, somewhere in the building, makes a sound. It just a fallen object for sure, or maybe the wind slamming a window against the wall, but Cody screams, climbs two steps at the time and literally throws himself in his arms. 

Leo can definitely work with that: scare him shitless to cuddle him later. As far as new hobbies go, that wouldn't be half bad.

“I want to go back to the hotel,” Cody murmurs, face still hidden in Leo's chest.

“Let's stay another ten minutes,” Leo tries to convince him. “I'm sure that was nothing.”

“Everybody in horror movies says that before being horribly murdered by some vengeful ghost,” Cody insists. “We're going to die and Blaine will never know how. He will think we ran away.”

“From what? His $300 million net worth?” Leo snorts. He takes advantage of Cody momentarily distraction to lead him up a few more steps by the hand. “That makes no sense.”

Cody frowns. “We're not with him because he's rich, Leo.”

Leo doesn't know if Cody is stating that or teaching him that notion. “Yeah, I know. I'm just saying he will never believe we ran away. He will know something happened to us and he will hire some super detective to find out where we are.”

“In the meantime we will be stuck forever in a Venetian Palace with the ghosts that killed us,” Cody insists, following him upstairs without noticing.

“Then he'll find some ghost hunters, like in those TV shows where they visit haunted houses and shit, and he will pay them to find us. We will talk to him through a ghost box or something, and we will be loud and clear because our love is strong and all that.”

“We could be talking with him loud and clear tonight if we get out of here alive,” Cody protests. But Leo is not listening anymore, too busy looking around.

This floor still looks like a museum, but it's a little more creepy, because there's a doll collection in here. “Oh, now we're talking,” he says, aiming the torch towards three cabinets contains a few of those super scary porcelain dolls with eyes that seems to stare into your soul. “There's some Annabelle stuff in here,” he says, excited.

Cody is still hanging by his hand and he doesn't intend to let it go, so he's forced to walk with him in front of those hundred beady eyes. “This place is weird,” he says again. “Let's go back to the hotel.”

“Just ten more minutes.”

“You said that ten minutes ago—Aaah!” Cody screams again when something creaks, loudly and clearly enough that it can't be ignored. Even Leo tenses. “Did you hear?”

“Yeah,” Leo clears his throat as he tries to contain Cody, who's trying to hide behind him. “I'm sure it's nothing.”

“How can you say that? It was clearly something!” Cody screeches.

“Alright, alright, come here,” he grabs him and pushes him gently against the first wall. “These old places make all kind of sounds, but they're just that: sounds. There is nothing in here.”

Cody looks around anxiously. “How can you know that?”

“Look at me,” Leo says softly.

Cody takes a deep breath and then he turns to him. Leo feels a little guilty because Cody really looks scared to death and he's shivering. “This is just an old building, there is nothing in here. It's just the atmosphere and the story you read.”

He kisses him on his forehead first and then his nose and cheeks until he feels Cody's body relax a little under his fingers, only then he kisses his lips, slowly at first and then more deeply. “We're going to go now,” he whispers. “It's going to be alright.”

He wasn't expecting the old man screaming at them in a language so weird Leo is not sure is Italian at all, though. The man shows up suddenly in the room, marching angrily towards them. Leo screams, so Cody screams too and none of them (old man included) knows what the hell is going on.

Leo grabs Cody's hand and goes for the stairs. “Run!” He orders.

They pass by an inch of the old man, who tries to grab one of them but fails miserably. They rush down the stairs and out the door and they keep running, without looking at the streets. They stop only when they feel sure the man is not following them – _if_ he was a man at all.

He was old and scary enough to be one of the many spirits that, according to the legend, still live in the house and bring stupid people who dare enter it – like them – to their death.

Man or ghost, they will never know but one thing is sure: they will never mention this place again.


End file.
